by Mary Morris
It wasn't long before there was a knock at my door. Lupe and the children stood holding candles. "You cannot spend another night in the dark," she said. I thanked her and they went away. Then I put the candles in a drawer to save for another night.
ON SUNDAY I DECIDED TO GO TO THE POOL AT THE Quinta Loreto, one of San Miguel's hotels. I took a book and my journal, but on the way out the door I ran into Trevor and Eleanore. They asked me where I was headed and when I said to the pool, they told me to wait; they'd come, too. I really wanted to go alone, but they seemed eager to join me. I knew only three Americans in San Miguel and I didn't feel ready to alienate these two yet.
When we got there, we plunked down our towels. Trevor called me a bookworm as he fondled whatever it was I was reading, and Eleanore started asking me if I liked the Alexandria Quartet, which she was just reading. I told her I'd read it in college. She said it reminded her of the life she was living here in Mexico. "You know," she said, "you could write the San Miguel Quartet, how about that?"
My eyes wandered to the pool, where I saw a swimmer I hadn't noticed before. It was a small pool, perhaps half the standard size, and a woman in a tank suit and goggles was swimming lengths. As the voices of Trevor and Eleanore droned on and on and in horrid Spanish accents they ordered papaya punches from obsequious waiters, I found myself transfixed by this swimmer. Length after length she swam and I began to count them. I counted well over one hundred and realized she was swimming a mile in that small pool. I marveled at her determination and strength, at the beauty and evenness of her strokes.
For about forty-five minutes this woman swam and then she pulled herself out of the pool. She wore a cranberry bathing suit that revealed her athletic build. She had the elegance of some large aquatic bird as she shook her head of auburn curls, splattering water. She walked toward her towel and I stood up. "Excuse me," I said, "but where did you buy those goggles?"
"Oh"—she turned to me—"I got them at home in Washington. Would you like to borrow them?" She said it so simply and openly that I did not refuse. I had not had goggles on in perhaps ten years, but I put them on and adjusted them to my eyes.
I got into the water and began to swim, at first in slow, choppy strokes, but soon my breathing deepened, I developed a rhythm, something I had not done in a long time. My breath, my arms, my body, moved in harmony, and for the first time in months I felt as if I had control over myself.
I did not swim long, but when I got out the woman was there. I thanked her for the goggles and told her we were having lunch soon. She agreed to join us.
Catherine Wilde was an art therapist from Seattle. She was getting her master's in social work and had come to San Miguel to learn Spanish so that she could work with Hispanics in the barrio. All through lunch with Eleanore, Trevor, and me, she kept looking at her watch. I noticed a nervousness, an impatience, as if she were not interested in us at all.
Trevor kept asking questions like, "What's it like working with crazy people?" He said that people could tell him their problems for fifty dollars an hour anytime. Eleanore said, "I once went to a shrink when some guy broke up with me but decided what I needed was just a new guy, so I went and bought clothes instead."
After lunch and a rest by the pool, Catherine began to gather her things. "Do you want to keep the goggles?" she said. "I've got another pair."
"Sure, I'd love to keep them. Are you leaving?"
She nodded. There was something fiercely independent about her. I both admired and was frightened by it. "I'll go with you," I said, unsure if that was what she wanted me to do.
We strolled back from the Quinta Loreto to the center of town. I asked if she wanted to get a watermelon juice and she said she did, so we went to La Terraza, a small restaurant with a patio on the jardín; they served all kinds of juice drinks. "What're you doing with those two?" she asked.
I laughed, sipping my watermelon juice, which tasted very cold and sweet. "You mean Eleanore and Trevor. I've met only a few people so far."
She nodded. "Have you been here long?" I told her a few weeks. "I've only been here a few days," she said, "but I'd stay away from them."
She asked me questions about what I did. I said I was a writer. "A writer. Oh, that's interesting." It would be a full year later, in Seattle, as I handed her a copy of my first published book, that she told me she had never believed I was a writer because all the Americans in San Miguel said they were writers, but she'd liked me anyway.
She continued to glance at her watch, as if she had a pressing appointment. Finally I said, "Am I keeping you from something? Do you have to be somewhere?"
She laughed. It was, after all, three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon in San Miguel, Mexico, and it was highly unlikely that anyone had anything pressing to do. "No, it's just a bad habit. I always feel like I've got to be somewhere, even when I never do." She twisted her watch around her arm so that she could not see it without making a significant effort. "I'm sorry I do that." She softened. She had nervous lines in her face, but they faded as she relaxed. "You know, last night, when the lights went out? I had no candles, nothing. I sat in the dark getting drunk on Kahlua."
"Me, too." I laughed. "I've spent a lot of nights that way. Buy candles."
She said, "Yes, that's a good idea." She got up to leave. "Would you like to have dinner with me? Tomorrow night?"
I said I would. Just then we heard the sounds of a procession, so we got up to look. It was some sort of parade for the mothers of San Miguel, but it was all men dressed like women. They had melon breasts, enormous bellies, make-up. Some swept the streets or dusted park benches. Others cradled babies of rags. We watched in disbelief. Then Catherine said she wanted to get home.
We did not live far from each other and I walked her home. I said I would pick her up the next day at seven. Then I cut across the rich neighborhood to the hole in the wall. Slipping through, I noticed that bits of broken glass now appeared on the top of the wall—Coke and Fanta and Seven-Up—making it impossible to climb over. The glass shimmered and the shapes looked like animals and flowers against the dark.
That night my dreams were filled with men. Erotic dreams of men making love to me. Wild and impassioned, men I used to know, men I have never seen. My body trembled, orgasms of seismographic proportions ripped through my sleep. I did not know where they came from, but I felt that this was what it must be like to be brought back from the dead.
There was a man I loved named Daniel who had left me the year before. And he came into my dreams that night in San Miguel as he had come into my life the night before I moved to Mexico. That night—and this was not a dream, this happened, or at least I think it did—my doorbell rang at four in the morning. I put on a robe and walked downstairs. And there in the neon light of the vestibule I saw him.
He had been a student of mine and he was seven years younger than I. We had dated for two years and one day he just put the phone down and didn't pick it up again. That had been in June of the previous year. He was one of the reasons for my going to Mexico.
When I opened the door, I said to Daniel, "What are you doing here?"
He said, "I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing here." Then he looked at me. "Who gave you the black eye?"
I told him it was no one he knew. He stayed until dawn and we made love. Then, as the sun broke, he said, "I've got to get going."
I said to him, "Do you know that I'm moving to Mexico tomorrow?"
And he replied, "No, I didn't know that."
"Well, I am," I said.
"Well, then, I guess I came to say good-bye." And he was gone.
LUPE HAD A WAY SHE LOOKED WHEN SHE WANTED something. It was like a child. She couldn't meet my eyes; instead she stared at the ground and turned her foot. In the morning she came over to my apartment, dragging Polio by the hand. "Could I ask you a favor?" I said she could. "Already," she said, "you have done me many favors."
"We are friends," I told her. "You have helped me here a great deal. They
are not favors."
She said she needed a pair of shoes and so did Lisa and Polio. She asked if I could loan her two hundred pesos, which at the time was about twelve dollars. She said it was an advance on work she would do for me and I told her it wasn't a problem to loan her two hundred pesos.
In the afternoon I saw Lupe in the street, shuffling through the dirt in the same broken sandals she had worn earlier that day. I called to her. "Where are your new shoes?" She glanced around to see if anyone else had heard and I realized I had embarrassed her. "They are inside," she shouted to me. She would show me later.
I stopped by for a visit. Sitting in her fly-infested kitchen, we made small talk. She gave me a recipe for "green chicken" and showed me how she made her beans so spicy. When the youngest children came up to me, I looked at their bare feet. "Where are your new shoes?" I asked. They looked ashamed and ran away. Lupe said she wanted to save the shoes for a special occasion. I understood somehow that she didn't want to show me the purchases she had made and I decided it was better not to pry.
I met Catherine at seven and we went to a little taco place for dinner. We both wore flowery skirts and peasant blouses, and we looked like sisters. I told her that I had seen a sign announcing an open house at the San Miguel branch of the American Legion. The American Legion was essentially a bar where soldiers hung out and played poker, but it was also where San Miguel's literary crowd went for beer and conversation. Catherine said she'd like to go. At dinner we talked in a more relaxed way. She told me about her boyfriend back home, named Tom, and I told her about Daniel and what a bad time I was having. She said, "You know, it's not easy to be a woman in our culture. I can tell you're smart. You're smart but you seem a little naive. You probably won't have an easy time."
"No," I laughed. "I can't say as I am having an easy time."
After our tacos, we wandered over to the American Legion. Some old soldiers were playing checkers. In a corner a serious poker game was in progress. Writers and artists were discussing their latest projects over glasses of cold Mexican beer. We were greeted at the door by a handsome Virginian named Derek Armstrong. He looked like a blond and compact Elvis Presley. "Well, howdy," he said. "You must be new in town. It's good to meet you. You don't look like soldiers, so you must be writers?"
"I used to paint," Catherine said. Then, pointing at me, "But she's a writer."
Derek ushered us to the bar and I noticed that he walked with a limp. He poured glasses of wine, sat us down at a table, and basically asked that we tell him everything about ourselves. "So, you've come down here to write?"
"Well, I came here to live."
"You can live cheap for a while."
I mentioned that I had a grant for my expenses and he seemed to move visibly nearer to me. His mouth opened and closed like a fish's. "You've got a grant. What kind of grant?"
I told him what kind of grant and that I had a book of short stories coming out and he moved closer still. Catherine winked at me and went to watch the poker game in progress. "Oh, so you're a writer. You know, I've been working on a book—a novel about my experiences in Vietnam and about a man who is impotent because of the war."
I wondered why it was that every man in San Miguel was writing a novel about impotence. I felt it did not bode well for my social life. I wanted to retrieve Catherine but I saw that she had joined the all-male poker game. From the way she held her hand and leaned away from the table, she seemed to know what she was doing. Derek felt I needed to see the view from the rooftop of the building, so he took me upstairs, and on the roof he told me about a bisexual experience he'd had in the army; it made up the core of his novel.
"You see," he said, "my hero has a kind of infatuation with a man. I mean, they almost make love in a rice paddy, but then after the war, he's embarrassed by this and rejects his friend. Then he can't get it up with the wife he left behind." I really did not want to know all the details, especially the autobiographical ones, but he told me. And then he said, "Let's go back down. I want you to meet my girlfriend."
But before he had a chance to introduce us, Catherine joined me. She had actually won a few hands. "I always quit when I'm ahead," she said. "Listen, these people are creepy. I'm not sure I want to stay."
"Me either."
We decided to go to the bathroom, then depart. Together we went into the bathroom. When I saw it was not stalls, I started to back away, but it was clear that Catherine was not modest about such things. She hiked up her skirt and peed. She did not flush. "Your turn," she said. I hiked up my skirt and peed. Our urine mingled. I did flush. I was finally getting close to someone here.
When we went to open the door, it was jammed. We could not get out. We tried and tried, but it was impossible. At last we banged. Derek and some other people forced the door open and were surprised to find two women inside. "Sorry," we apologized feebly, and they all grinned at us, especially Derek, who seemed to think he'd found some people he could really relate to.
Lupe began helping me around the house. In exchange I would bring bags of food whenever I went to market. Or, if she went to market for me, I'd give her extra money and say, "Buy yourself meat and we'll make a big stew this evening." Sometimes I'd leave her notes, which I now wrote in a careful and belabored Spanish, dictionary in hand, asking her to find the gas man or get some wood when the firewood donkey passed. But I'd ask for strawberries and find wildflowers. Or I'd go for days without wood.
Finally one afternoon I asked her, "Lupe, are my notes poorly written?"
Lupe, who was washing dishes at the sink, did not look my way. "No, but I can't read them."
"Should I print instead?"
She kept running water over the dishes. "I can't read at all."
I watched her back, stunned. I had never met someone who could not read or write. I didn't know what to say. Finally I said, "Well, would you like to learn?"
"Yes, but I am too stupid and old."
"You are not that stupid," I told her, "and you are not that old."
I went into the other room and took out a yellow pad. On the top of the pad I wrote down her name. GUADALUPE, I wrote in big, bold letters. I recalled when I was a little girl and my father had done the same for me. We sat down together at the table. "This is your name," I told her, pronouncing it in an exaggerated way. "This is the letter G." I wrote the letter on a separate line. And for the rest of the afternoon Lupe sat at the table, struggling with the letter G.
I RAN INTO DEREK AT THE MARKET ONE DAY, AND he invited Catherine and me for drinks at his house. I left a note for Catherine at her guest house, something I did almost every day now, and said I'd pick her up. When we arrived at Derek's the party was already in swing. Mainly with Derek pontificating. He went on and on and in truth his stories were remarkable. "Let me tell you about my dog, Oscar," he said. "He was the most suicidal dog you'll ever meet. Used to love to dive off this four-story bridge and most of the times, except once, he lived..." He told us about getting arrested for shitting in Chapultepec Park. About being jailed in Mazatlán for trying to stop a bullfight. He told stories of cockfights and bullfights and about getting stopped by the federales between San Miguel and Santa Fe.
I met a guy named Arnold who'd written a guidebook to Mexico and he said he always got stopped by the federales. I looked at him, with his long hair and handlebar mustache, and thought how I'd probably stop him as well. They switched to mountain climbing and Derek tried to explain how it's all in the angle of your climb, and then he was back to the bullfights and assorted episodes of his obviously not so distant youth.
I was amused, but Catherine was restless and somewhat annoyed. She kept looking at her watch, rolling her eyes, making faces at me, indicating her desire to leave. But Derek was a terrific storyteller. I could not help but wonder if he could do on the page what he did over a few beers and shots of tequila with lime.
Then his girlfriend, Marnie, a mousy brown-haired woman with an ironic sense of humor, piped in. "Don't believe a word o
f this," she said to us. "He makes it all up. He says his stories come to him in his sleep—he gets up in the middle of the night, turns the light on, and writes it all down. He does his best work while he's asleep." She informed us that Derek slept under a mosquito netting, with ear plugs to shut out the noise and a retainer to keep him from grinding his teeth. She also told me in confidence that every day she locked him in his office and took the key, and he would write until four o'clock when she unlocked the door. I asked what would happen if there was a fire. "We just hope there isn't." She smiled.
I was thinking about leaving when the doorbell rang and two Mexicans walked in. One, named Carlos, was a friend of somebody or other and was definitely Spanish looking, with fair, European features. He came in, greeted us, and shook hands with everyone. His friend, dark-skinned with pure Aztec features, stood back in the shadows. Yet my eyes landed on him right away. He was tall, slender, and striking in an eggshell-blue shirt and jeans. He had a flat nose and high, sculpted cheekbones, deep-set dark eyes, and thick black hair. There was something about this man which struck me; it was as if a light emanated from him, a warm glow. He said his name was Alejandro. "But they call me 'El Negro,' " he said, the dark one.
They grabbed beers and sat down among us. They had driven up from Mexico City to visit Carlos's family in Guanajuato. Carlos was an acquaintance of Arnold, the man with the handlebar mustache. Alejandro sat near me and said he taught school in Mexico City. "What do you teach?" I asked.
"Metal crafts," he replied.
"That's the equivalent of shop," Derek put in.
